Engine-Building Bragging Rights Driving Force in Valencia
The building is at the end of a Valencia cul de sac, five minutes or so from Magic Mountain, and it’s austere--two stories and white, with only the numbers of its address showing until you get close enough to the door to see the decal: “HPD.”
Still no hint of what goes on inside, and you don’t get through the door without buzzing an outside intercom and stating your
purpose for being there.
Your story had better be good. And don’t bring your camera.
“Honda is very security conscious,” the receptionist says.
Honda Performance Development Inc. takes its business, which is coaxing more than 750 horsepower out of a 300-pound, 161.7-cubic inch engine, seriously. It has to, because it has seen both the bottom and top in four years of racing with CART, and the view from the top is much better.
“At Homestead, there was about three-quarters of a second difference between the first 14 cars on the grid,” Robert Clarke, general manager of HPD said of CART’s season opener March 2. “We feel we have a slight edge.”
Which is?
“If I told you . . .” Clarke said and smiled.
Right. If I told you, I’d have to kill you.
“Sometimes, I guess we take security to extreme,” he acknowledged.
HPD provides engines for six drivers.
Jimmy Vassar was the CART champion last season in a Honda-Reynard. Alex Zanardi, his teammate, was third in points and the series’ top rookie. Gil de Ferran was sixth and Adrian Fernandez, Parker Johnstone and Andre Riberio were in the top 17 with Honda.
At year’s end, Honda had the manufacturer’s championship, which it proudly proclaims on a banner in the building: “We were champions in 1996 and we will be again.”
The trophy is on a counter in a climate-controlled room where there is a machine that measures tolerances to within a quarter of a human hair.
At year’s end, the Honda HRH engine that had brought that title was junked.
“It was tough, throwing all those things in a dumpster,” Clarke said. “But we started with a clean sheet of paper. We figured we had gone about as far as we could go with that engine.”
Introducing the HRR, with about 1,000 parts, each of which is seemingly caressed at HPD.
Each week, engines arrive in aluminum crates from tracks and test sites in a rotation system. Each racing team pays Honda $1.8 million to $2 million a car for the season, for which it gets engines and the technicians to keep them running. It’s a money-losing operation until Honda factors in the advertising value of a victory.
This week’s race engine is next week’s practice and qualifying engine, with about a 450-mile life if it was set up for most CART races, about 600 miles if it was designed for the 500 milers at Michigan International Speedway or California Speedway.
It is taken out of the car on Saturday night before the Sunday race and a fresh twin is installed for the race. Another engine is in the driver’s backup car.
The used engine is crated and sent to Valencia, where on Monday two-man teams--an engine builder and engine assembler, with the builder in charge--take it apart, clean it, check for stress and measure parts for wear. True to Japanese-style production, there is no assembly line here.
“We think this way gives the teams a sense of ownership,” Clarke said.
The engine is reassembled, gleaming, with no hint that it was ever asked to power a car at speeds up to 250 mph. New parts are used as needed, and the engine is tested to be ready to go up to 250 mph again, back at the track, where the rotation begins again.
The process takes two long days, and the two-man teams are supported by about 30 other technicians and cleaners, working in three glassed-in side rooms and a main assembly bay.
Office personnel and field engineers work upstairs.
And no, the engine-building teams don’t know the cars that will receive the fruits of their labor.
“The assistant manager knows on Friday what engines are going in what cars, but nobody is told,” Clarke said. “We wouldn’t want anyone to get the idea that anybody is favoring a driver.”
On Sunday, the engine teams watch the race on television and root for Honda, because, who knows? The engine in the winner’s circle could be theirs. On Monday, they find out if it was.
On a board in the workers’ break area is an updated chart, big letters testifying to their success and that of their drivers. Eleven times in 16 races last season, an engine team working quietly in the Valencia cul de sac had bragging rights.
NHRA
Jim Yates will be looking for a hat trick for the second year in a row when he lines up his Pontiac Firebird in the pro stock division at the Slick 50 Nationals in Houston this weekend.
Yates won at Phoenix and Gainesville, Fla., pulling within three points of division leader Warren Johnson, whom he calls “the ultimate competition.”
Yates won the first three races in 1996, at Pomona, Phoenix and Gainesville, and went on to his only NHRA title.
IRL
Scott Sharp and Tony Stewart have traded fast laps in practice for Sunday’s IRL Phoenix 200, with first Stewart fastest at 170.455 and then Sharp at 170.777.
Series leader Mike Groff was lagging, going only 160.071 in his G-Force Nissan Infiniti.
WINSTON CUP
Dale Earnhardt has won nine races at Darlington Raceway, one short of David Pearson’s record 10, but the idea of catching Pearson will be a long way from Earnhardt’s mind when he lines up Sunday for the Transouth 400 Winston Cup race.
Pearson scored his 10th victory in 1979, when he was substituting for an injured Dale Earnhardt.
“I don’t think about tying or breaking records, I think about winning,” Earnhardt said.
It’s been a long time since he could do anything other than think about it. Earnhardt has gone 31 races without winning.
Sunday’s race will be the last run on the track in its current configuration. With expansion, the starting line is being moved to the backstretch for the Darlington 500 in August.
PIT STOPS
Robby Gordon, who drives a Winston Cup stock car for Felix Sabates’ SABCO team, took a SABCO G-Force-Olds Aurora Indy car to Indianapolis this week and turned laps at 215 mph, running just over 300 miles in two days. Gordon and Sabates want to try for a May 25 double, running in the Indianapolis 500 in the daytime and the Coca-Cola Charlotte 600 that night. . . . Costa Mesa Speedway at the Orange County Fairgrounds features its 29th annual Coors Light Spring Classic on Saturday night, with the top 16 Northern and Southern California riders in American Motorcyclist Assn. points and two-man speedway sidecar teams.
